This invention relates generally to radiation treatment planning.
Providing radiation therapy to patients diagnosed with cancer includes creating a radiation treatment outcome. Often, where the cancer is localized in the patient's anatomy, such as in a tumor, the creation of the radiation treatment outcome involves solving a difficult geometric problem and/or making judgment calls related to the total radiation dose or total dose received by the tumor and nearby healthy tissue. Therefore, creating the radiation treatment outcome can be a time consuming process that involves multiple medical personnel providing multiple iterations of the treatment outcome over many days, which may increase the time from diagnosis of the cancer to treatment of the cancer. In particular, the dosimetrist who creates the treatment outcome has a difficult challenge in creating the optimal plan due to the overwhelming degrees of freedom and constraint priorities. Further, physicians, who should be guiding the dosimetrist during the treatment planning, are often disconnected from the treatment planning process because of other demands on their time. Consequently, the modern radiation treatment planning process is time-consuming and often proceeds without the sufficient involvement of the physician treating the patient.